Hiking Guide

Choosing the right hiking clothes will contribute a lot to the outcome of your hiking adventure. Though hiking clothes have the same basic purpose as normal daily clothing, it has an additional goal – that is to protect your body from harsh weather, terrain conditions, and other unexpected situations you may encounter while outdoors. 

For this reason you should choose your hiking clothes with utmost care. This doesn’t mean that you’ll bring your whole closet. The general rule of traveling light should still be followed. Just like hiking boots, hiking tents, and all other gear, weight and bulk are serious considerations when it comes to hiking clothes. 

To give you amore clear understanding of the purpose of hiking clothes and why it is necessary to wear the appropriate ones, read the following: 

Protection and Padding 

One important aspect of your hiking clothes is its ability to provide you with protection from environmental factors other than moisture, through padding. While the human skin is an absolute marvel, it is not very strong. It can easily get cut by anything that’s sharp or moving at high velocity. It could get bruised, dried, and break. 

The outdoors possesses a lot more danger to our precious skin than our everyday city surroundings. Thus, a lot of padding and reinforced materials, through the wearing of hiking clothes, is used to protect you from the possible damage your skin might undergo because of rough terrain or chaffing of equipment. 

Maintaining your Thermal Equilibrium 

People often refer to hiking clothes like sweaters and jackets as “warm clothing” when actually, the purpose of hiking clothes like these is not to increase your body temperature. What they do instead is to help you keep and maintain a thermal equilibrium. 

What is a thermal equilibrium? The term simply means that your body is generating as much heat as you are loosing. That way, your body does not have to produce extra heat or lose it through sweating. Producing extra heat or sweat can be very taxing on your body, draining your total energy. By wearing hiking clothes that help maintain your thermal equilibrium, you thus save your body’s energy, to last you for the entire trek. 

Keeping you Dry

This is an obvious purpose of hiking clothes. If your skin is dry, your body is able to preserve more of its heat. Not only that, dry skin increases general comfort. Face it, no one wants to feel all sweaty all the time. 

Hiking clothes that help keep you dry have two parts. First, it should protect you from outside moisture. Your hiking clothes should be able to protect you from rain, snow, and other possible sources of water. Second is the ability to protect you from body moisture. Your hiking clothes should move body moisture (sweat) away from your body. 

To serve both these purposes, your hiking clothes should be waterproof, and at the same time be breathable. This combination of protecting you from outside moisture and keeping your body moisture away from your skin might be difficult to attain. But you’ll find that having this kind of hiking clothes will give you lots of benefits and protection. Hiking should be fun as well as a safe adventure.